You give your evenings to teenagers, you love them, and nobody ever really trained you for this. If that sounds like you, Tim Schmoyer wrote an ebook for you. He gathered 130 tips and ideas in one place, many of them from his blog Life in Student Ministry and some inspired by a list from Youth Specialties. It’s for volunteers at small churches, and for youth pastors who are just starting out in their first position and want to avoid the usual mistakes. Even if you’ve been at it for years, you’ll find plenty in it.
The idea came from his wife’s grandmother. She passed his blog posts on to the volunteers at her church and kept asking him to put everything in a book and sell it. He did put it together, but he gives it away for free under a Creative Commons license.
The tips are short, often just two or three sentences, and very practical: tell stories from your own life when you speak, admit your mistakes, learn every name as fast as you can, keep parents in the loop, and remember that you’re a leader before you’re a friend. Some are about your group and your team, others about you: protecting your private life, saying no and praying for your ministry.
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Several of the tips go deeper in our own articles:
- Bible Reading Made Easy: The Inductive Method
- 20 Tips for Dealing with ADHD in Your Youth Ministry
- 6 Tips That Can Keep Youth Leaders from Burning Out
- Event Checklist: How to Find Out If an Event Is Worth It
- Developing Volunteers: How Do I Prepare Teenagers for Leadership?
- The 50 Best Games for Youth Ministry
The 130 tips and ideas are Tim Schmoyer’s and first appeared on Life in Student Ministry. Waldy Schröder, Christoph Gunia and Andy Fronius translated them for Pulse in German.
English version: October 2026
